The NSF Engineering Research Centers and the University–Industry Research Revolution: A Brief History Featuring an Interview with Erich Bloch

The NSF engineering research centers (ERC) program served notice of a sea change in university research funding and institutional designs, representing a transition from department-based, principle investigator-oriented university science to a new center-based model encouraging universities to work with industry and to work beyond the strictures of academic disciplines. In our view, the past three decades of U.S. science and technology policy have not seen an institutional change of greater importance. This paper begins with a brief history of the ERC program, including discussion of the program’s origins, goals and research foci, growth, and influence as a model for other science center programs in the U.S. and abroad. Our “primary data” include an interview with Erich Bloch, former NSF director who was one of the chief architects and advocates for the ERC program. Because of the historical importance of this interview, we present the entire interview with the original material largely unaltered. We conclude with discussion of the managerial challenges that ERCs face within the context of traditional university structures.     

Women on the edge of crime: Crack cocaine and the changing contexts of street-level sex work in New York City

In this paper, we attempt to examine, engender and contextualize the theses that (i) women's emancipation escalates [women's] crime and violence and (ii) women's drug use escalates [women's] crime and violence, by drawing on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in relation to women crack smokers and the changing contexts of street-level sex work in New York City. The paper attempts to illustrate how the position of women crack smokers can only be understood by locating their lives, their illicit drug use and their income-generating activities within the context of a specific set of localized socio-economic and cultural developments. We suggest that observations from our research refute the theses that women are becoming more criminal and/or violent in the context of either their consumption of crack cocaine or their alleged emancipation.An earlier version of this paper was presented by the first author at the Joint Meetings, Law and Society Association and Research Committee on the Sociology of Law of the International Sociological Association, Amsterdam, 26–29 June 1991.